


London, 1945

by Mikanskey



Series: Cities and years [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Hope, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikanskey/pseuds/Mikanskey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles, young doctor at a dispensary in the suburbs of post world war London, clings to the hope of finding Erik , sent to the front in Germany.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Londres, 1945](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4918228) by [Mikanskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikanskey/pseuds/Mikanskey). 



> In the same time that I try to progress on two other fanfictions I started in French some times ago , here my first short story translated into English. This is a test , English is not my mother tongue and I have no beta. This must be full of mistakes , I apologize . I hope , despite everything, to share with you my enthusiasm for Alternate Universe in the Cherik Fandom.
> 
> And now with a incredibly beautiful illustration by Téddibe (see at the end of chapter 3). You can also appreciated her works on her blog here : teddibe.tumblr.com. She's such a talented artist : don't hesitate !

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now with a incredibly beautiful illustration by Téddibe (see at the end of chapter 3). You can also appreciated her works on her blog here : teddibe.tumblr.com. She's such a talented artist : don't hesitate !

It was a beautiful end for an afternoon like so many others.

 

The tired sun of November warmed the office where piled a heap of papers, pens and ink.

Charles worked this evening, after a day with his patients. For months now, the feverish atmosphere of the end of the war, with the arrival of the last of the wounded from the front, had given way to a stunned calm.

Dressed in simple shirt sleeves, leaning on the wooden covered with shredded leather, the young doctor ended a last bundle of letters.

To his dear sister Raven recently married, to his friend Alex returned from the front and soon back to the US, to the courageous Moira remained in Paris after the Liberation and finally to the Army’s administration for news, any news: from **Him**.

 **Him** , who had not returned.

 **Him** who had not been heard from for 3 years.

Since he had looked good for a few abdominous officers to send this handsome young man of German origin behind enemy lines.

"Ideal to infiltrate the Reich" they said .

Ideal to slip in the heart of this diabolical machine of freedoms’ destruction.

Ideal. And especially suicidal.

The war was over since May.

Prisoners had returned, hundreds wounded had returned to their homeland and to their homes.

But of **Him** , not a trace.

So Charles was bent to write to the Army, to hospitals, to embassies, everywhere.

Anonymous scribbler sent him soft and condescending answers, and uniformed and new gallooned couriers that were not less soft and condescending.

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

Too long. His locks were beginning to buckle on his neck, giving him an air of young student.

With his azure-blue eyes, his freckles and his cheeky smile, old men called him "my boy"!

"My boy" what’s a true irony when the war had made him grow violently, promoting him, not even 23 years old, in charge of a dispensary for lack of other more experienced candidates. Leaving him the only guarantor of the lives of dozens of soldiers, civilians crushed by fighting, by the Blitz. All this suffering bruised flesh spread out before his eyes.

How stay naive after that?

But it was nothing.

Nothing or very little compared to his restless nights.

His chilling insomnia.

These nights where he could only think of **Him**.

Think of the suffering of **Him** , the loneliness of this man he guessed so far from his country, his home ... so far from their embrace.

This unique embrace, the memory of which remained engraved on Charles’s skin, knotted to his soul.

That night with **Him** , the only one they had had just for them before the innumerable cold war days.

Before the emptiness, the lack of **Him**.

Charles drove this thought, an insidious memory’ drop like a bitter syrup flowing through his veins, sticky and heavy, crushing his chest, suffocating. If he let it fill him again, it would gnaw him, destroy him a little more.

He resumed his correspondence, and tried to concentrate.

Time passed slowly.

His mind calmed.

 

Footsteps.

Someone knocked softly on the door of his office.

It was Kitty, the new nurse; she dared not enter and remained timidly on the landing.

She spoke in an insecure voice.

_\- Doctor there is someone who asks for you ... he's ..._

She seemed to search for words and, at the young doctor’s lack of reaction, she launched, linking and jostling her sentences without pausing for breath.

_\- He is a soldier in a English uniform but ... he is not ... well... with his look, I can see that he’s a stranger, even if it is not my right to judge ... but with his little German accent I do not know if I should bring him to you. With what the government said about spyware, you know I thought that I ..._

_\- I beg your pardon?!_

Charles turned to her so quickly that his movement startled the young woman.

She continued, repeating slowly, surprised to have suddenly got the attention of his superior.

_\- He's wearing a British uniform Doctor, but he has a German accent, I'm sure because I've heard soldiers talk like that in the prison camp near the station, it's strange that he wants to see you and …_

_\- Did he tell you his name?_

Charles was already up. When had he risen from his chair? His face must show a frank bewilderment because the nurse began to stammer.

_\- No, well I do not think I ... he .. he just said he was looking for Dr. Xavier. ..He’s downstairs, I did not know ... he ... so I told him to wait .. but I ..._

 

It was impossible!

A small hope, they said: a small hope that he is alive, a small hope to find him, that he comes back.

Charles felt his heart racing.

This hope My God, he had never been able to pull it out of his soul!

Ordinarily, he would calmly thank the nurse. He would have taken the time to finish his writing and have put on a jacket to greet the visitor there ...

but what she said ... if these time ...the possibility…

He rushes to his office’s door, tumbled down the stairs leading to the ground floor, then there was still a corridor. A long corridor with dark wood paneling, a real kind of court corridor, and after a dazzling light coming from the hallway.

He can see it over there, that light.

The sun had to enter through the front door.

This was probably wide open.

It was there that he had to wait.

This visitor who asked to Dr. Xavier.

This soldier with a German accent.

That light seemed far and yet so close.

What were a few meters after months of waiting?

But suddenly it would have made him almost afraid, with its shades of crimson that were beginning to break through the end of the autumn’s day.

Should he reach it? Had he the courage?

And if it was for yet another bitter disappointment, yet another suffering.

" _We do not know Doctor_ ",

" _maybe it was him Doctor_ ",

" _maybe he was caught by Russian army_ ",

" _maybe he was deported_ ",

" _torture_ " ,

" _killed_ ".

 

To hear this again.

 

To imagine.

 

The memory of **Him** that night suddenly fills Charles.

He had felt his hands, trembling from passion, browsing his bare skin, his breath against his neck, his burning body who had possessed him, the violent life he had felt with every beating breaths of his heart.

 

And now imagine icy, bruised, dead mass of flesh in the damp darkness of a anonymous jail somewhere in Germany or France.

 

No ! He had to know!

 

Later the disappointment…

 

Later the pain…

 

Suddenly Charles ran down the hall, to the light…

 

 

 


	2. His Rage and this Serenity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik , too, hopes to finally find the one he loves after the chaos of war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is exciting to translate the text of a fanfiction !! And I learned a lot of things !
> 
> A huge thank you to the adorable Leafeylocket that offered assistance to be my beta . His work is precious and indispensable because there were a bunch of mistakes !!   
> Also thank you for your kindness my friend !!

_____

 

Here.

This door.

 

Someone had told him to try this address.

  
For Erik, it was the fifteenth clinic.

This one is not different from the other ones.

A brick facade of a London suburb, a neat porch overlooking a quiet street, a few pruned bushes and an old apple tree as a garden.  
For two months he traveled the British capital, finding only ruins and sorry faces.

 

_We do not know._

_We are not sure._

_A doctor Xavier?_

_Yes, perhaps, look there._

  
But there, there was nothing. 

 

 

Nothing other than dignified faces of wounded and silent sadness’s figures at a time when the world was looking forward to the end of the war.  
The end of this war, so anticipated and finally grasped after months.. years of struggles.

 

How could he have succeeded to safely escape from this?  
He was not sure to have the answer.

An incredible luck that helped him avoid every ambush… every enemy fire.

 

Luck yeah, and a great hope.

 

To find HIM, to resume their lives. Or rather, for Erik who had survived four years with the sole wish of seeing him - to have him in his arms, to fill the hollow of his heart: to start living again.  
   
Charles, his angel, his hope, this young man of not even twenty years with a beauty to die for… But his cries of rage still resonated in his ears. His screams, that morning, when Erik had been torn from his arms. Men in uniform, sent by a malicious mind that had broken coldly, remorseless, into both their lives.

 

The same day he had been sentenced: jail or join the army, confinement for years or a war that should have been shorter.

  
Should have.

  
Through a friend not very concerned with morality, they had exchanged a few letters the first months of his incorporation, during the time he was trained, conditioned, before he left.

  
Those letters had been his only reading material. Letters that he knows by heart, so intense and pure, sensual enough to burn your soul, words that share their love, their passion. They had so little time to experience that passion.

  
The young nurse in a white coat who had just opened the door, seemed a little frightened.

Before escaping, she had just told him to wait there in the hall paved with white and black tiles, overlooking two long dark corridors.

So he waited, uncomfortable. The cool breeze blowing from the street through the door left open. He turned to the fresh air and to the gentle sun, closed his eyes and breathed slowly.  
   
His hope ... he wanted to swim and melt in it, find the serenity he had lost.  
Lost.   
That morning, four years ago.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is the last chapter of this short first fic.  
> Again, with Leafeylocket's help there are fewer mistakes , I hope...^_^' Thank you again for your help sweet proofreader !!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this story. :D  
> Have a nice travel on AO3 !

\-------------------

Charles had remained frozen in the shadows of the corridor, not daring to move, unable to move.

  
Erik.

  
He was here.

  
It was him. So beautiful in this evening light, he seemed an apparition.  
His silhouette had always this fawn’s grace, this intimidating behavior that allowed him, him - the son of a simple worker – to enter anywhere. With the uniform, his slim waist and his shoulders stood out clearly under the water green stiff fabric. His hair was cut shorter and pulled back, highlighting the sharp lines of his forehead, of his jaw and his neck. He had turned his gaze to the street and in his steel-blue eyes he seemed to lose his soul far inside himself.

 

It was him.  
Alive.

  
After the war, after the rain of bombs.

  
Erik miraculously alive.

  
Erik, who had turned to him at the sound of his arrival, or perhaps to the sob Charles had blurted before flattening his palms over his mouth. A reflex, to keep from screaming.

  
They said he was dead. They told him to stop writing, to stop hoping.

  
Charles began to shake violently and the tears he had stopped crying for weeks filled his eyes in an instant. His body reacted to this too much joy as it would have to an absolute distress.

 

  
Erik seemed shocked too.

 

Charles.

  
Finally.

  
His hope, unique and fundamental hope alive before him. Impossibly like that the man he had left. Not physically - he had matured - he saw it in his shoulders, in his face. No, it was in his eyes. His eyes were the same, his way of looking at him, of seeing him, the way the blue could drown in tears. Charles ...

  
Gasping, he lets four seconds elapse before he can take a step, then another, finally his legs deciding to obey him, responding more to instinct than reason. His reason that was too shocked to worry about the open door to the street where someone could see them.

  
Another step, then a momentum, he took him in his arms.

 

 It could have been a simple hug. After all, they could be two friends who find themselves, nothing more innocent in a time full of separations and reunions.

  
But you would have had to be blind not to see, to not understand, with the way he hugged Charles, and when he buried his face in the brown locks of the young man. In the only sound of their breathing, there were pages of promises of love.

  
Charles felt filled with a cold fever.  
Exhausted suddenly and consumed by emotion. He put his burning forehead in the hollow of Erik’s neck. His skin was left uncovered by the open uniform, it was cooler here. He breathed slowly, enjoying the moment, filling with the smell of him.

  
He was there, alive.

 

The young doctor closed his eyes, mesmerized by the chaste embrace that said so much and seemed to show nothing. Erik's hands - a thousand times he had dreamed of their caress - traveled from his waist to his hips, from the small of his back to his neck. They were such that he remembered, graceful and beautiful, possessive and loving. They seemed to want to relearn him.

  
Allowing himself to, his eyes closed, he put both his hands on the chest of the soldier. His heart was beating so hard! All this life, this blood that ran there under the skin.  
His breath... he felt it, warm and comforting, before feeling Erik’s lips landed on his forehead.

  
This light kiss, almost reverent.  
There was something sacred in that moment.

A silence, a loving calm.

They were together. Finally.

  
They both slowly opened their eyes.  
   
A slight noise behind them made them snap back to reality.

  
They parted instantly. Driven by a reflex fear, Charles stood between Erik and the intruder.  
Kitty was right and embarrassed as a boarding student caught in the act.

  
Charles recovered somehow.

 

_\- You can go home Miss Pryde, I take care to close tonight._

  
The young nurse opened her eyes and perceiving that her boss invited her to retire, she  made a kind of wobbly curtsy. She stammered a " _good evening Doctor_ " and red as a beet escaped down the corridor. The sound of the slamming back door left them alone again.

  
Charles felt his heart was pounding in his chest. What had she seen or even understood, imagined perhaps? The thought that something could takes away again the man he loved terrified him.

  
He turned quickly toward Erik.

  
In the eyes of him there was a special glow, something that appeared to be anger or frustration, maybe both.

This fear to love openly, absurd and cruel, can’t devour him anymore.

  
Erik, who had known countries at war, desolation and massacres, could not accept that something as futile as good morals could comes prevent them from being happy. He was ready to fight for it, now, and Charles had to understand that he would be at his side.  
Whatever happens. Nothing was more important.

  
This thought was like an electric shock.  
He pulled Erik to him, one hand in his hair, the other gripping the lapels of his jacket. He felt the hands of his lover grasp his waist as to anchor him.

 

Almost violent, greedy, their lips met in an unreal kiss that had nothing tender. It was bathed in tears, mingled with sobs. It was raw and wild. Pure desire for two people who had been deprived for so long. They were drowning one into the other. They wanted, needed, desperately hungry for each other. They had suffered so much in this abridged passion, this lack of pleasure. Their breaths were punctuated with groans.

  
The air around them seemed tinged with gold. The sun had just died on the horizon of the city skyline. There remained only a sheen, which wrapped them. When it disappeared finally, the two lovers returned to their senses.  
They had not exchanged a single word. Them, they were still four years ago, they could debate for hours just for the sake of confrontation of ideas. But this moment did not need words, words did not have a place here; too bland, not strong enough.

 

Erik slowly caressed Charles’s cheek, the pinch of stubble under his fingers. He smiled at the intimate detail.  
The young doctor took his hand and kissed the palm.  
They exchanged soft grins. They both knew what would be done that night.  
That night, discreet and protective, would hide them from the world once again.  
A night to heal their souls and relearn each other.  
One night as a huge inspiration before hundreds sunny days.  
Charles closed the heavy front door and led Erik to the warm heart of the house...

 

[](http://www.casimages.com/i/16081706540364273.png.html)

FIN


End file.
